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Location: Formerly Pleasanton Ca, now in Marietta Ga
10,309 posts, read 8,480,866 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by freemkt
For some reason - perhaps it's our homeowner-centric culture - nobody questions Why Is The Rent So High?
The rent is so high largely because rent-seeking, NIMBY, protectionist homeowners have vested financial and lifestyle interests in using government to create housing shortages, inflate their property values, and prevent newcomers of inferior means from moving into the neighborhood.
Minimum wage today is a cost necessitated by our NIMBY anti-housing policies.
MW workers shouldn't need to get roommates or live with family when they deserve the free markets in housing and land use that will produce an ample supply of housing.
Nobody ever tells homeowners to get roommates if they think property taxes are too high - they just use government to get what they want.
Loser mentality.
Most of my friends who are homeowners all had roommates in order to afford the homes to start with. Your mindset is poor me, gimme gimme.
All I need and want is a 400-sq ft home on a 2,500-sf lot. Too bad government makes that option unavailable to me.
I've offered before and I will offer again: please set up a gofundme account and I will gladly contribute to it so you can move to a more affordable place to live.
Now, I know times have changed, but I started working for minimum wage in 1984. I made $3.35/hour. Granted, I wasn't working full time at that point, but the idea that anyone could live independently on $3.35/hour never crossed my mind. Minimum wage jobs were for teens going through school, not for educated adults. When and at what point did people decide that they should be able to support themselves and possibly a family as well on minimum wage??
Yep, times have changed.
Back then, we were a manufacturing and industrial powerhouse economy with the service economy a very small part of it.
Today, we mostly a service economy where most are no longer teens.
What applied back then no longer applies today.
With the current trajectory we are on, the poor in the USA, will have it worse than the poor in India in the coming years.
Why?
Because housing, food and fuel is very cheap in India right now and wages are rising, even with a billion people.
In the USA, housing, food and fuel continue to rise while wages are stagnating at the same time.
Right now, a poor person in America may make 30,000 a year, and seem much richer than their poor counterpart in India, but if they spend 70% of their money on housing and the Indian spends 70% on housing, then they are no better off.
The wealthy in America want to keep housing artificially inflated and at the same time want third world wages.
The math is not going to work.
Most of my friends who are homeowners all had roommates in order to afford the homes to start with. Your mindset is poor me, gimme gimme.
In my experience, most homeowners have a huge sense of entitlement. They consider themselves entitled to preferential property tax rates, generous homeowner tax breaks, immunity from onerous regulations on rental property, and not having to live with roommates. \
Not necessarily. Sec 8 provides a voucher for a particular dollar amount. If they rent a place that costs more than the voucher, they pay the difference. If they rent a cheaper place, it costs them nothing.
Section 8 subsidizes housing up to the median rent for your metro area, dependent on household size.
e.g. childless adults can't use their voucher on a 2BR apartment, but parents sometimes scam an extra bedroom by claiming multiple kids of opposite sex. (e.g. a parent of 2 boys can scam an extra bedroom by claiming her kids are opposite sex).
The voucher holder pays 30% of income and the remaining rent is subsidized up to the metro median.
Now, I know times have changed, but I started working for minimum wage in 1984. I made $3.35/hour. Granted, I wasn't working full time at that point, but the idea that anyone could live independently on $3.35/hour never crossed my mind. Minimum wage jobs were for teens going through school, not for educated adults. When and at what point did people decide that they should be able to support themselves and possibly a family as well on minimum wage??
When the number of adult breadwinners earning minimum wage reached critical mass.
As of 2012, Census data say that 48.5 percent of minimum wage earners are at least 25 years of age.\\
Minimum Wage - it's not just for teens anymore.
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